This was the trail which Lena Forest used in making her infrequent visits to the town. And when she saw it, and knew that her captor was intending to enter it, her hopes rose again, and gave her renewed strength.
Lightfoot was shrewd enough to know that since the Indian scare there was not much likelihood that any wayfarers would be encountered on that trail. What he feared were the men whom he believed to be following him—Buffalo Bill and his comrades, of whom Crazy Snake had told him, and against whom he had been warned.
Lightfoot was light of foot, as his name indicated; in truth, he was a copper-colored Mercury, so fleet of foot and untiring was he. Fast as he could drive the horses on, he had no trouble in keeping at their heels.
He drove them down the trail, which here curved and wound round and over the hills, dipping and rising and losing itself in many a charming spot.
Lena Forest looked hungrily ahead, whenever a rise of the trail gave her an extended view, always hoping to see there white horsemen.
At first this crafty maneuver of Lightfoot’s puzzled her, for he seemed to be going toward the town, when she naturally anticipated that he would wish to keep as far from it as possible. But soon she began to understand, when she saw, by glancing back, that the hoofprints of the horses and his own moccasin tracks were lost in the other tracks, which, in such numbers, had beaten the ground hard as flint.
She saw, too, that it was probably his purpose to leave this main trail at some point, after utilizing it all he could, and that he would then strike again into the rocky hills, and hold his course toward the Blackfoot village.
The white girl and the Indian maid talked little as the horses were thus driven on. Lena Forest had about lost hope of being able to persuade this Indian girl to help her; and she thought it not wise, anyway, to express her desires when Lightfoot could hear, for he had shown a pretty clear understanding of English.
Though the Blackfeet were now threatening a bloody war on the whites, there had been in the recent past so much intercourse and trading between the two races that most of the Blackfeet, men and women, had picked up a fair smattering of the language of the white men, so that they could understand it at least in its simpler forms.
By and by the fear of the pursuers he believed to be following became so strong in the mind of the young Indian chief that once more he left his prisoner in charge of the Indian girl, and stole away for the purpose of climbing a hill, that he might look backward over the way he had come.